One aspect of SEO that may get overlooked is that of properly using the headings tags. There are certain "rules" that you may follow for all your pages to help you rank better in search engine results.
I have edited several Blogger templates and notice that they all have similar structure with both the layout and HTML tags. Since Blogger uses a single template file for all pages, it is important to look at the template and see how some of the heading tags are used that can affect SEO.
By default, some heading tags will be used for the same text on all pages. For SEO purposes, you may not want the H1 headings to be the same on all pages. Below are several examples of what is currently available in templates, as well as some simple changes you can make to improve the templates.
Changing the H1 Tag for the Blog Title
Most Blogger templates that I have seen use the H1 heading tag for the title of the blog. While this is good for the homepage, you will probably want the H1 tag to be the post title on the post pages. With the single file format of a Blogger template, you will need to use an "if" statement to help control this tag.
Many templates include a line in the header section that looks similar to the following:
As you can see, the title of the blog (displayed within the title includable) is surrounded by the H1 tag. This means that on all your blog pages, the title of your blog will use the H1 tag. For SEO purposes, you may want to move the H1 tag to the post title for the post pages.
To accomplish this, we would need to include an if statement that checks the page type to determine if it's an index page, and if it is then use H1 for the blog title. For all other pages, change the blog title to display as regular text that has the same styling as the H1 tag. The code to do this is shown below.
<h1>
<b:include name='title'/>
</h1>
<b:else/>
<p class='title'>
<b:include name='title'/>
</p>
</b:if>
This blog uses the above code, and you can see it when you view the source. Open the homepage and look at the blog title in the header. You will notice that it is within the H1 tag. Next, view a post page an you will see that it is no longer within the H1 tag, which has now been moved to the post title.
Let's look at how to move the H1 tag to the post title.
Using H1 for Post Titles
Most blogger templates assign the H2 tag to the post title, regardless of the page that is being displayed. While this is good for the homepage, search pages, archives, and category pages, it isn't for the post pages.
The post title for all pages is displayed in the code similar to the following:
<b:if cond='data:post.link'>
<a expr:href='data:post.link'>
<data:post.title/>
</a>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:post.url'>
<a expr:href='data:post.url'>
<data:post.title/>
</a>
<b:else/>
<data:post.title/>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</h2>
You can see in the above code example the H2 tag is used to display the post title. Post pages should have the title as the H1 tag instead of the H2 tag, since it is the title of the page.
Similar to the blog title, an if statement can be used to change the post title from an H2 to an H1 tag when a visitor is displaying a post page. The code below shows how to make these changes.
<h1 class='post_title'>
<b:if cond='data:post.link'>
<a expr:href='data:post.link'>
<data:post.title/>
</a>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:post.url'>
<a expr:href='data:post.url'>
<data:post.title/>
</a>
<b:else/>
<data:post.title/>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</h1>
<b:else/>
<h2 class='post_title'>
<b:if cond='data:post.link'>
<a expr:href='data:post.link'>
<data:post.title/>
</a>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:post.url'>
<a expr:href='data:post.url'>
<data:post.title/>
</a>
<b:else/>
<data:post.title/>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</h2>
</b:if>
The above code checks to see if the current page is an "item" page, or post page. If it is a post page, then the post title is surrounded by the H1 tag. For all other pages, the post title is then displayed using the H2 tag.
The two changes shown in this post are to be used in conjunction with each other to ensure each page on your blog contains an H1 tag. By making the above changes to your template, you may help to improve your ranking within the search engine results pages.
